Outline speakers praised in 17th-century chapel installation

Consecrated in 1619 by the Archbishop Of Canterbury, Christ’s Chapel of God’s Gift is part of the Dulwich Estate in south-east London. It provides a place of worship for the schools supported by the estate, and the residents of Dulwich Almshouse and the local area, as well as offering a range of community and volunteering activities. It has recently been equipped with a new audio system, designed by About Sound, and installed by NoiseBoys Technologies, utilising products from Outline’s Architectural Series.

In common with many ancient sites of Christian worship across the UK, the chapel provides several challenges, in terms of installing a speech-reinforcement system. Its naturally reverberant internal layout requires the careful placement of loudspeakers with suitable dispersion characteristics to achieve the required intelligibility. The fabric of the Stuart-era building has to be respected when equipment is mounted and installed, while the aesthetics of the space as a place of worship demand that everything is as close to invisible as possible.

About Sound specialises in house of worship projects, and has expertise in public address and webcasting systems, hearing assistance, projectors and screens, and organ video relay. The Cambridge-based company’s design for Christ’s Chapel of God’s Gift relied on Outline’s Ai81 and Ai41 loudspeakers, powered by Powersoft Mezzo amplifiers. The audio solution was installed by engineers from NoiseBoys.

Matthew Dilley, About Sound’s owner, says: “Only one AS6 sub was required with two Ai81s doing stereo L/R at the front, a secondary pair of Ai81s for fills and 10 Ai41s for the aisles and balcony fills. The amps are Powersoft Mezzo, which already have the presets for the speakers, making commissioning easy. Also, because the horizontal dispersion is a little wider than some column speakers, we were able to mount a little higher. This offsets the proximity to the first pair of ears, so to speak, giving us a bit more consistency of level.”

“The Outline Ai series is a welcome addition to our installation offering,” says NoiseBoys director Phill Beynon. “They are similar in size and appearance to some other brands’ models, but in tests, we have found them to be of superior sound quality. The ability to easily mount them through the front of the speaker, then hide all the fixings with the magnetic grill, is a great bit of attention to detail from Outline. Overall, we’re really impressed.

“Well-thought-through speakers like these make our job as installers much easier. We can hide them in places that other speakers and speaker brackets simply won’t fit. And once they’re installed, they’re invisible to most passers by, which is exactly how it should be.”

Dilley adds: “The customer says people go in and ask where the speakers are – which is exactly what we aim for in this kind of heritage setting.”